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EDUCATION FOR ALL AND MULTIGRADE TEACHING
Education for All and Multigrade
Teaching
Challenges and Opportunities
Edited by
ANGELA W. LITTLE
Institute of Education
University of London, U.K.
,
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-10 1-4020-4590-5 (HB)
ISBN-13 978-1-4020-4590-5 (HB)
ISBN-10 1-4020-4591-3 (e-books)
ISBN-13 978-1-4020-4591-2 (e-books)
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2006 Springer
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Printed in the Netherlands.
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge support from the UK Government’s Depart- ment for International Development (DFID) for the funding of several of the research projects reported in this book and their dissemination through conferences and seminars. I also thank DFID for its support for the establishment and maintenance of the website on Learning and Teaching in Multigrade Settings (LATIMS) that accompanies this book (www.ioe.ac.uk/multigrade).
I thank a number of persons and institutions who have collaborated withus over several years, including Carmen Montero and the Instituto deEstudios Peruanos, Lima; M.Sibli and the National Institute of Education, Colombo; N.H. Chau of the National Institute of Education Sciences, Hanoi;Kate Owen of the British Council, Hanoi; and H. Bhajracharya of the Research Centre for Educational Innovation and Development, Kathmandu. Most of all I thank the many students who welcomed us into their classes and their teachers with whom we spent many hours talking and reflecting onthe challenges and opportunities of multigrade teaching. I am also grateful to Brigid Hamilton-Jones for her copy editing of the text and Chris Purday and Abdul Mukith for translating photographs from many sources into a common format. Photo credits are due to the Fundación Escuela Nueva Volvamos a la Gente and to the contributors to this book.
Finally, and on behalf of all contribution, I thank our respectiveinstitutions for the time to make visible the largely invisible, marginalised and widespread phenomenon of learning and teaching in multigrade settings.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgementsv
List of Contributors
List of Abbreviations
CHAPTER 1Education for all: multigrade realities and histories
ANGELA W. LITTLE1
CHAPTER 2R
Learning opportunities for all: pedagogy in multigrade and monogradeclassrooms in the Turks and Caicos Islands
CHRIS BERRY27
CHAPTER 3 R
A multigrade approach to literacy in the Amazon, Peru: school and community perspectives
PATRICIA AMES 47
CHAPTER 4 R
Multigrade teaching in London, EnglandCHRIS BERRY AND ANGELA W. LITTLE
67
CHAPTER 5 R
Multigrade teachers and their training in rural NepalTAKAKO SUZUKI
87
CHAPTER 6 R
ALISON CROFT103
Prepared for diversity? Teacher education for lower primary classes in Malawi
xi
xvList of Plates
xix
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 8 R
Improving the quality of health education in multigrade schools in Vietnam T. SON VU AND PAT PRIDMORE
155
CHAPTER 9 R
Adapting the curriculum for teaching health in multigrade classes in Vietnam
PAT PRIDMORE WITH VU SON 169
CHAPTER 10 R
EFA for pastoralists in North Sudan: a mobile multigrade model of schooling
SHEILA AIKMAN AND HANAN EL HAJ 193
CHAPTER 11 R
Extending basic education to out-of-school children in Northern Ghana:what can multigrade schooling teach us?ALBERT KWAME AKYEAMPONG
215
CHAPTER 12R
Costs and finance of multigrade strategies for learning: how do the booksbalance?
KEITH M. LEWIN 239
CHAPTER 13 R
Escuela nueva’s impact on the peaceful social interaction of children in Colombia
AND DANIELKEN MOLINA265
CLEMENTE FORERO-PINEDA, DANIEL ESCOBAR-RODRÍGUEZ
MANJULA VITHANAPATHIRANA 127
CHAPTER 7R
Adapting the primary mathematicscurriculum to the multigrade classroom in rural Sri Lanka
CHAPTER 14R
Multigrade lessons for EFA: a synthesisANGELA W. LITTLE
300
INDEXI359
CONTENTS ix
Plates349
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Editor and contributor
Angela W. Little is Professor of Education (Developing Countries) at
the Institute of Education, University of London and was formerly a Fellow
at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Since
1998 she has directed the research programme ‘Learning and Teaching in
Multigrade Settings’ funded by the Department for International
Development (DFID), UK. She has researched and written extensively on
Education for All (EFA), has a specialised knowledge of Sri Lanka and is a
Past President of the British Association of International and Comparative
Education. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Contributors
Sheila Aikman is Global Education Adviser with OxfamGB and currently
co-coordinator of the Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development
project with the Institute of Education, University of London. Prior to
working with OxfamGB she taught at the Institute of Education and from
1998 to 2001 was an associate director of the international research
programme, ‘Learning and Teaching in Multigrade Settings’. Sheila has
written and researched extensively on intercultural education and indigenous
education in South America and Peru and continues to publish on areas of
gender equality in education, multigrade teaching and learning and
indigenous rights. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Albert K. Akyeampong is a Senior Lecturer in International Education at
the Centre for International Education (CIE), University of Sussex, and
convenor of the International Professional Doctorate in Education at the
Sussex School of Education. He has served as an Education Consultant for
basic education reforms in Ghana and Rwanda. His current research interests
are in teacher motivation and incentive structures in Africa and South Asia,
and improving access to primary and post-basic education. He writes on
teacher education, science and mathematics education, secondary education,
access and quality in basic education, and teacher assessment. He can be
contacted at [email protected]
xi
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Peruvian Studies. She completed her doctoral research on ‘Multigrade
schools in context: literacy in the community, the home and the school in
the Peruvian Amazon’ at the Institute of Education, University of London
in 2004. She writes on rural education, including multigrade schooling,
socialisation, intercultural and indigenous education, gender equity, literacy
and textbook use. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Chris Berry is currently an Education Adviser with the Department for
International Development. Formerly a researcher and lecturer at the
Institute of Education, University of London, he completed his doctoral
research on ‘Achievement effects of multigrade and monograde primary
schools in the Turks and Caicos Islands’ in 2001. He has extensive field
experience as a teacher and teacher trainer in West Africa, Indonesia and the
Caribbean. He has collaborated with the Commonwealth Secretariat on the
development and piloting of multigrade teaching materials and has advised
the governments of Belize and Dominica on the implementation of policies
to meet the needs of teachers in multigrade and multi-level classrooms. He
can be contacted at [email protected]
Alison Croft is a Lecturer in Education at the Sussex School of Education,
University of Sussex. Her career in education has included teaching in the
UK and Japan, working as a regional special education adviser in Namibia
and researching UK government policy on inclusive education. Her current
research and teaching interests lie mainly in the field of international
education, particularly primary education, teacher education, gender and
inclusive education. Her doctoral research focused on the relationship
between pedagogy and culture in aid to education in Malawi and other
developing countries. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Hanan el Haj works with Oxfam GB as urban programme coordinator in
Khartoum, Sudan. She focuses on basic education for the internally
displaced and urban poor and for pastoralist communities in eastern and
western Sudan. Hanan is responsible for programme design and plans
that focus on strengthening civil society capacity to advocate improved
education especially for girls. Hanan graduated from the University of
Gezira, Sudan with a degree in Agricultural Science. She can be contacted at
Patricia Ames is Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Education at the
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and member of the Institute of
xii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Economics of Universidad del Rosario. He can be contacted at
Clemente Forero-Pineda is Professor at the Universidad de los Andes
School of Management. With Universidad del Rosario he directed research
on schooling methods and peaceful social interaction. He was director of
Colciencias, Colombia’s National Science Fund and is a Past President of
Colombia’s National Participatory Planning Council. He writes on economic
aspects of education and science in developing countries. He can be contacted
Keith M. Lewin is currently Professor of Education at the University of
Sussex and Director of the Centre for International Education. He has
worked extensively in Asia and Africa on educational planning and finance,
EFA and post-basic education strategies, science and technology education
policy, and teacher education. His projects include the ‘Multi Site Teacher
Education Research Project (MUSTER)’ in Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, South
Africa, Trinidad and Tobago. He has acted as a special adviser to several
Ministries of Education on the development and implementation of national
plans at both primary and post-basic levels. He can be contacted at
Danielken Molina is Research Assistant at the Inter-American Development
Bank in Washington, DC. He has been an educational researcher at
Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. He participated in the team
that evaluated the expansion of secondary schooling, in the design of an
information system for Higher Education, and in the project on schooling
methods and peaceful social interaction. He can be contacted at
Pat Pridmore is a Senior Lecturer in Education, Health Promotion and
International Development at the Institute of Education, University of
London and has more than 20 years experience of working in education and
health in low- and middle-income countries. From 1998 she was associate
director of the international research programme, ‘Learning and Teaching in
Multigrade Settings’, becoming co-director in 2004. She has a special
interest in curriculum adaptation for multigrade settings and has extended
and disseminated her research through work with the World Bank and
UNICEF. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Daniel Escobar-Rodríguez is Senior Analyst at the Social Foundation
in Bogotá, Colombia. For three years he was a member of the research team
on schooling methods and peaceful social interaction in the School of
xiii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
research and project planning work on community schools and EFA in
Zambia with a special focus on HIV/AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.
primaryEducation,
suzuki.takako @jica.
go.jp
Manjula Vithanapathirana is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of
Education, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, where she specialises in child
development and educational psychology. She was formerly a researcher
with the Department of Education Research, National Institute of Education,
Sri Lanka. She completed her research on ‘Improving multigrade teaching:
action research with teachers in rural Sri Lanka’ at the Institute of Education,
University of London in 2005. She is currently researching and developing
teacher education materials on multigrade teaching. She can be contacted at
Son Vu is a researcher at Hanoi University of Education, in Vietnam. Her
current research is on learner activity, autonomy and creativity. She
previously worked as a researcher with the National Institute for Educational
Sciences, under the Ministry of Education and Training with a focus on
improving the quality of teaching and learning in primary education.
Her doctoral research with the Institute of Education, University of London
in Vietnam’ was completed in 2005. She can be contacted at
on ‘Improving teaching and learning for health in multigrade schools
She completed her doctoral research on ‘Multigrade practice in
schools in Nepal: practice and training’ at the Institute of
University of London in 2004. She can be contacted at
Takako Suzuki is a Project Formulation Advisor in Education with the
Japan International Cooperation Agency. She is currently undertaking
xiv
APEID Asia and the Pacific Programme of
Educational Innovation for Development
BAGET Bachelor of General Education and Training
BCE Before Common Era
BPEP Basic and Primary Education Project
CE Common Era
CERID Research Centre for Educational Innovation
and Development
CERT Centre for Education Research and Training
DANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de
Estadística
DIJIN Dirección de Policía Judicial
DEO District Education Office
DfES Department for Education and Skills
DFID Department for International Development
DNP Departamento Nacional de Planeación
EFA Education For All
EMIS Education Management and Information
System
FCUBE Free, Compulsory, Universal Basic
Education
FS Foundation Studies
GDCA Ghana Danish Communities Association
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GER Gross Enrolment Ratio
GES Ghana Education Service
GMR Global Monitoring Report
GNP Gross National Product
HMG His Majesty’s Government of Nepal
HMI Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools
IDS Institute of Development Studies
INSET In Service Education and Training
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
xv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LLECE Latin American Laboratory for the
Evaluation of the Quality of Education
MECEP (Spanish) Special Programme to Improve
the Educational Quality of Primary
Education
MIITEP Malawi Integrated In-Service Teacher
Education Programme
MOE Ministry of Education
MOEC Ministry of Education and Culture
MOECSW Ministry of Education, Culture and Social
Welfare
MOEHE Ministry of Education and Higher
Education
MOET Ministry of Education and Training
MUSTER Multi-site Teacher Education Research
NEC National Education Commission
NEP (Spanish) New Pedagogical Approach
NER Net Enrolment Ratio
NGO Non Governmental Organisation
NIE National Institute of Education
NIER National Institute for Educational Research
NIES National Institute of Educational Sciences
NLS New Literacy Studies
NUT National Union of Teachers
PMP Primary Mathematics Project
PTR Pupil Teacher Ratio
PTTU Primary Teachers’ Training Unit
QCA Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
QT Qualified Teacher
REV Rural Education Volunteer
SABER Sistema Nacional de Evaluación de la
Calidad de la Educación
SATs Standardised Assessment Tests
SCF-UK Save the Children, United Kingdom
IREDU-CNRS Institut de Recherche sur l’Education,
Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique
LATIMS Learning and Teaching in Multigrade
Settings
LEA Local Education Authority
xvi
ST Student Teacher
SWA South and West Asia
TCI Turks and Caicos Islands
TDU Teacher Development Unit
TSO The Stationery Office
UK The United Kingdom
UPE Universal Primary Education
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Education, Science and
Cultural Organisation
UNICEF The United Nations Children’s Fund
USA The United States of America
USAID The United States Agency for International
Development
VDC Village Development Committee
WCEFA World Conference on Education For All
SEAMEO INNOTECH Southeast Asian Ministers of Education
Organisation Regional Centre for
Educational Innovation and Technology
SFL School For Life
SLA Self Learning Activity
SPLM/A The Sudan Peoples’ Liberation
Movement/Army
SSA Sub Saharan Africa
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv ii
1. Colombia: self-learning guides encourage learners to use books from the
class library, Escuela Nueva programme
2. Colombia: students learn together using self-learning guides, EscuelaNueva programme
3. England: in the monitorial system in 19th Century England students,
grouped by achievement level, were taught by monitors. A singleteacher taught and supervised the monitors.
4. Nepal: a student receives personal support from a teacher in a small multigrade school
5. Malawi: students enrolled in Standard 1 (Grade 1) class: same class,a
same grade but clearly not same age
6. Malawi: where resources are scarce, what you bring from home makes a
significant contribution to pupil diversity. Here, students without penciland paper are encouraged by their teacher to learn to write in the sand.
7. Peru: children learn after school
8. Peru: girls learn together to become literate
9. Sri Lanka: One teacher is responsible for three grade groups, working in
a temporary classroom in rural Sri Lanka
10. Sri Lanka: Grade 1 students work together in a multigraded class k
11. Turks and Caicos Islands: the teacher divides the blackboard space
between two grades: students work individually on individual grade-levelwork
12. Turks and Caicos Islands: students work collaboratively
13. Vietnam: a grade-group monitor takes charge of her peers while the
teacher works with another grade-group
14. Vietnam: A typical multigrade school in the Northern Highlands
15. Sudan: The El Shiekh teacher with his sheep, Darfur
16. Sudan: Large Class of learners in temporary classroom, Darfur
xix
LIST OF PLATES
1
CHAPTER ONE
EDUCATION FOR ALL
Multigrade realities and histories
ANGELA W. LITTLE
MAHESWARI: A MULTIGRADE TEACHER
It is 7.30 and Maheswari, the school principal, unlocks the door to the single-
room school in the tea estate where she resides. Schoolchildren have been
arriving since 7.15: some alone or in small groups; others in a long snaking
line, led by an elderly retired labourer. Maheswari’s colleague, Siva, a young
untrained teacher, lives 25 miles away and will arrive at the school by bus at
around 9.00. But the bus often arrives late, and sometimes not at all.
The school day runs from 7.30 to 1.30, and there are 120 pupils on roll.
After a short assembly, Maheswari fills out the attendance registers for each of
the classes. Today one-third of the children are absent. Each grade occupies its
own space in the open hall, and each is treated as a class. No class has its own
walled room, but each class has its own blackboard.
It is now 8.30 and the children await direction from the teacher, quietly
and expectantly, their books piled high on their desks. The five classes
reflect the graded structure of the national system of education. Officially
children enter Grade 1 in the academic year following their fifth birth-
day, but many in Maheswari’s school start later. Others repeat a year
because of low academic achievement, resulting in mixed ages within the
same grade. The national syllabus is organised into content and learning
objectives for each of the five grades, and textbooks and teaching guides are
produced for each.
Maheswari moves from grade to grade, giving instructions, opening text
and exercise books and writing exercises on the blackboard for the upper
grades. Siva will assume responsibility for Grades 4 to 5 when he arrives.
Maheswari tries to keep the children in the upper grades occupied by asking
them where yesterday’s lesson finished, setting a related exercise, or asking
them to read the text of the next lesson. Even though several of the children
were absent yesterday, this does not influence the tasks she sets for the
A.W. Little (ed.), Education for All and Multigrade Teaching: challenges and opportunities, 1–26.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
ANGELA W. LITTLE2
whole class, because the children are expected to proceed through the
textbooks together.
Meanwhile, the children in Grades 1 to 3 still wait, quietly, patiently.
Maheswari hands out maths work cards to Grade 3. There is no time for any
introduction to the tasks, and she offers them as exercises in practice and
reinforcement. She asks the children in Grade 2 to read out loud from their
reading books in unison. At last she reaches Grade 1 and begins their lesson
on letters and sounds, writing letters on the blackboard, sounding out the
letter and asking children for words that start with the same sound.
Siva arrives at 9.30 and relieves Maheswari of the responsibility for the
upper grades. Maheswari continues similarly through the rest of the day,
trying to work through the teacher’s guidebook as best she can, teaching
each of the grades in turn. The guidebook is designed for teachers who work
in schools where a single teacher is responsible for a single grade.
Maheswari tries to reproduce faithfully this graded structure in her two-
teacher school.
Later that morning an education official arrives to check the attendance
registers and school logbook and to convey information about a forthcoming
training course for the teachers and examination dates for pupils. Maheswari
attends to his questions and, with the help of two children, offers him a cup
of tea.
In the meantime, Grades 1 to 3 are finishing their set work and becoming
a little restless. She sends Grade 1 outside with an older child to practise
their letters with sticks in the sand. A monitor from an upper grade
supervises Grades 2 and 3, darting around quickly, distributing verbal
punishment here, physical there. The official leaves and Maheswari
continues teaching, stopping briefly only when the children break for half an
hour in the late morning heat.
Across the official school year of 190 days, Maheswari is absent for 30
days and Siva for 40. When these days coincide, the school is closed.
Maheswari’s experience is similar to that of hundreds of thousands of
teachers worldwide. Such multigrade teachers are responsible for the
organisation of children’s learning in more than one grade, within a national
system of education in which the curriculum is prescribed for each separate
grade. The schools in which these teachers teach are multigraded through
necessity – too few teachers and students to justify the allocation of one
teacher per grade.
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 3
EDUCATION FOR ALL
Education for All (hereafter EFA) is a worldwide movement that promotes
the expansion and quality of learning for all children, young people and
adults. Building from many national and local movements over time, the
contemporary movement resonates at the global, the regional, the national and
the local levels. It has six goals (www.unesco.org/education/efa). These are:
• access to and improvement of early childhood care and education
• access to and completion of free and compulsory primary education
of good quality for all, especially girls, children in difficult
circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities
• appropriate and life-skills programmes for all young people and
adults
• improvements in levels of adult literacy
• elimination of gender disparities
• improving all aspects of the quality of education.
In this book we are concerned mainly with the second and the last of these goals.
The EFA Framework for Action identifies primary schools as the
institutional means through which these two goals can be achieved. Within
primary schools learners are generally divided into grades for teaching
purposes. The graded groups are known by different terms in different
countries, for example, grade, year, class, standard, but they generally refer
to cohorts of children who enter, progress through and graduate from school
at the same time and who follow grade-specific curricula. In most primary
schools around the world a single teacher is responsible for a class formed of
students from a single year grade at any given time in the school day. This is
known as monograded teaching. This may be contrasted with settings where
a single teacher is responsible for a class formed of children from two or
more year grades. This is known as multigraded teaching.
Many of the current shortfalls in achievement of the EFA goals are found
among those communities who live at the margins of society and who
participate in the margins of the formal education system. At many of these
margins, schools either do not exist at all, or where they do, they often
involve multigrade teaching.
Learning and teaching in multigrade settings – invisible and persistent
Maheswari is but one agent in the worldwide movement for EFA. Her school
may be described as a multigrade school. Maheswari herself is a multigrade
ANGELA W. LITTLE4
teacher, i.e. a teacher who is responsible within the same time period for
learners from across two or more year grades. She may be contrasted with a
monograde teacher who, within the same time period, is responsible for
learners from a single curriculum grade. Monograde schools, monograde
teachers and the children who learn in monograded settings form the
dominant and visible elements of all national systems of education
worldwide. Multigrade schools, multigrade teachers and the children who
learn in multigraded settings operate at the margins of these systems and are
largely invisible to those who plan, manage and fund education systems. Yet
they persist.
The rest of this chapter explores the invisibility and persistence of
learning and teaching in multigraded settings in three ways. First, it collates
evidence from around the world on its extent. Second, it analyses how
monograde classes have come to dominate systems of primary education
worldwide during the twentieth century. Third, it outlines the conditions
under which multigrade classes arise and persist. The chapter concludes with
an overview of the issues that arise from this analysis to be addressed in the
rest of the book.
EXTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF MULTIGRADE TEACHING
So how prevalent are multigraded classes around the world? How many
learners are in these types of class? How many teachers are teaching across
two or more grades? How many schools have only one teacher? And why is
it important for EFA to focus on the needs of these teachers and learners?
One of the difficulties in answering questions about extent is the absence
of comparable, and, in some countries, any, education statistics. While some
countries make available information about the number of one-teacher
schools, others focus on the number of multigrade classes and still others the
number of multigrade teachers. Still others make no information available.
Terms vary from country to country and can obscure similar settings. In
our research (www.ioe.ac.uk/multigrade) we have found the following terms
used to describe what we would recognise as a multigrade class –
combination class, composite class, vertically-grouped class, family-grouped
class, un-graded class, non-graded class, mixed-year, mixed-grade class,
mixed-age class, multi-aged class, consecutive class, double class, classe
multigrade, classe unique.
Although these various terms have been used in a range of settings to
indicate what we mean by a multigraded class the reader should not assume
that the terms are always synonymous. Similarities in terms can often
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 5
obscure differences in meaning and hinder communication across cultural
and national boundaries. Take the terms mixed-year and mixed-age for
example. In England there is a close correspondence between ‘year’ and
‘age’. Children enter school at the same age (within a calendar year) and
move through classes with their age peers. The number of children who
repeat a year are few indeed. In such an education system the meanings of
a mixed-year class and a mixed-age class coincide. But in many develop-
ing countries, despite an official age of school-entry, children enter
at different ages and many repeat grades. In Malawi, for example, a recently
stated government objective is the reduction of the age range in a class
from 10+ years to 5 years (Croft, this volume Chapter 6). In Tanzania the
ages of pupils in Grade 1 primary vary from 7 to 15 and that of entrants to
Form 1 secondary from 12 to 17+ years (Lewin, this volume Chapter 12). In
such settings it would be erroneous to equate the terms mixed-year with
mixed-age.
With this caveat in mind, the following statistics reflect the current extent
of the multigrade reality in very different countries, expressed in slightly
different ways.
• In Australia in 1988, 40% of schools in the Northern Territories had
multigrade classes.
• In Burkina Faso in 2000, 36% of schools and 20% of classes were
multigraded; 18% of school children were studying in multigrade
classes.
• In England in 2000, 25.4% of all classes in primary education were
classified as ‘mixed-year’ i.e. two or more curriculum grades were
being taught by one teacher; 25% of all learners were studying in
mixed-year classes.
• In France in 2000, 34% of public schools had ‘combined’ classes;
4.5% of these were single-teacher schools.
• In India in 1996, 84% of primary schools had 3 teachers or fewer.
Since primary schools have five curriculum grades this means that if
learners are to be ‘on task’ for most of the prescribed school day,
then some teachers must be responsible for two or more grades for
some part of each day.
• In Ireland in 2001/2, 42% of all primary school classes comprised
two or more grades. Of these 64% were composed of two
consecutive grades and 36% three or more grades.
• In the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Laos in 2003/4 64% of all
primary schools had multigrade classes; 24.3% of all classes were
multigraded.
ANGELA W. LITTLE6
• In Mauritania in 2002/3, 39% of all pupils were educated in a
multigrade class; 82% of these pupils attended schools in rural areas.
• In Nepal in 1998, the teacher–primary school ratio was 3.8. Primary
schools comprised five curriculum grades. If learners are ‘on task’
for most of the prescribed school day, it follows that most teachers
must be responsible for two or more grades for some part of each
day.
• In the province of New Brunswick, Canada, in 2003/4, 13.9% of all
classes in Elementary schools (K–G8) combined grades.
• In Northern Ireland in 2002/3, 21.6% of all classes (Years 1–7) were
‘composite’ classes (i.e. two or more grades taught together).
• In Norway, in c. 2000, 35% of all primary schools were small
schools using multigrade teaching.
• In Peru in 1998, 78% of all public primary schools were multigrade.
Of the multigrade schools 41% had only one teacher; 59% had more
than one. In rural areas 89.2% of all public primary schools were
multigrade, of which 42% had only one teacher and 58% more than
one.
• In Sri Lanka in 1999, 63% of all public schools had 4 or fewer
teachers. Some are primary schools with five grades and some are
primary and post-primary with up to 11 grades. If learners are ‘onftask’ for most of the prescribed school day, it follows that some
teachers must be responsible for classes spanning two or more
grades for some part of each day.
(Brunswic and Valérien, 2003; Hargreaves et al., 2001; Kamil et al., 2004; Little, 2004, 2001, 1995; Mulryan, 2004; New Brunswick,
2004; Phommabouth, 2004; Solstad, 2004; Suzuki, 2004;
UNESCO/APEID, 1989).
It is clear from the above that learning and teaching in multigrade schools
and classes is extensive in a wide range of countries.
These figures are significant for the achievement of EFA and the
Millennium Development Goals in two main ways. First, most EFA
planning and funding is predicated on the monograded classroom. In many
respects learning and teaching in multigraded and monograded classes are
similar. Teachers need training and support; students need stimulation,
support, learning materials and feedback from assessment. But needs are
also different. Teachers in multigraded classrooms need to support learning
across grades – for which curricula, teacher education, and assessment need
to be planned differently. Conventional norms on school resources and
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 7
THE PARADOX OF MULTIGRADE TEACHING
The significance of multigraded schooling for EFA is greater in developing
than in industrialised countries. As the figures above indicate, learning and
teaching in multigrade settings is widespread in many countries with well-
developed education systems and very high rates of participation. Yet the
pedagogic challenges appear to be fewer for reasons that will be explored in
subsequent chapters. Elsewhere, we have suggested that these challenges
represent a paradox (Little, 1995, 2001; Pridmore, 2004).
For children to learn effectively in multigrade environments teachers need to
be well-trained, well-resourced and hold positive attitudes to multi-grade
teacher deployment to monograded classes do not necessarily map well onto
schools where teachers are responsible for two or more grades. Second,
access to primary education for all remains an elusive goal in many countries, and especially in geographically isolated, economically poor and
socially disadvantaged settings. These settings are often those that give rise
to multigrade, not monograde schooling, a fact that is frequently overlooked
by EFA planners. Recent enrolment data place the numerical challenge in
perspective. In 2000 it was estimated that 562 million primary age children
were enrolled in primary schools in developing countries, 62.3 million in
developed countries and 11.1 million in countries in transition. Among these n
46.5%, 48.7% and 48.6% respectively were girls. Out-of-school children
were estimated at 100.1 million, 1.8 million and 2.1 million in developing,
developed and transition countries respectively. The corresponding
percentages of out-of-school girls were 57%, 43% and 43% respectively.
The majority of out-of-school children in developing countries were female;
and in developed and trd ansition countries male (UNESCO, 2003). A
conservative estimate of 30% of children currently in multigrade classes in
the currently out-of-school children foff r whom opportm unities to learn are mtt ost
access to good qualitytt , compmm letion of the primary stage and learning
achievement.
all countries yields a world total of 192.45 million. Add this to, say, 50% of
likely to occur in a multigraded class. This generates an additional 52 million
children. This totals 244.45 million children worldwide for whom a multi-graded pedagogy is likely to be the one through which they learn in primaryschool. For the developing countries alone the total estimate is 218.60 million.
And this excludes children in monograded classes who are seeking opportuni-rr
ties to learn on days when teachers are absent. These estimates barely scratch
the surface of the challenge, for EFA is concerned not onlt y about access but
ANGELA W. LITTLE8
teaching. However, many teachers in multi-grade environments are either
untrained or trained in mono-grade pedagogy; have few if any teaching/
learning resources; and regard the multi-grade classroom as the poor cousin of
the better-resourced mono-grade classroom found in large, urban schools,
staffed by trained teachers.
(Little, 2001: 477)
In the classrooms studied in the research undertaken for this book many
teachers regarded multigrade teaching as the poor relation. In Peru teachers’
attitudes to multigrade teaching are generally negative (Ames, 2004 and
Chapter 3 this volume). The monograde classroom is perceived as the
‘normal’ classroom; the multigrade classroom as a ‘second-class’ option.
The teachers did not choose to work in the multigrade school and felt
unprepared to work in these classes. They felt that children don’t ‘get the
same’ as in monograde classrooms. The isolated and isolating conditions of
work and the poverty of the communities they serve contribute to the
negative attitude. In Sri Lanka attitudes of multigrade teachers to multigrade
teaching are generally negative. This is partly due to unawareness about the
effectiveness of multigrade teaching strategies (Vithanapathirana, 2005). In
Nepal, teachers’ attitudes to multigrade teaching were generally negative.
Fifty out of 56 teachers interviewed who were currently engaged in or had
previous experience of multigrade teaching thought that multigrade teaching
is more difficult than monograde teaching (Suzuki, 2004, see Chapter 5 in
this volume). In the Turks and Caicos Islands, teachers reserved their most
negative comments for the planning burden imposed by the multigrade
classroom. One teacher commented that she ‘hates multigrade classes’ and
‘would prefer to teach a monograde class with fifty pupils in it’ because in
the former she has to prepare a separate plan for each grade in the class.
Only in our London study did we encounter some teachers with positive
attitudes. While half of the multigrade teachers interviewed expressed a
preference for monograde teaching, the other said they did not mind either
way, expressed a clear preference for multigrade or gave qualified responses
(Chapter 4 this volume).
Subsequent chapters of this book will explore these and other challenges
posed by multigrade settings, and will outline contemporary attempts at
resolving the paradox through planned interventions. Before that however
this chapter steps back in time to explore how and why the monograde class
emerged as the dominant form of school organisation around the world in
the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 9
THE EMERGENCE OF MONOGRADE SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION IN
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
The history of the emergence of monograded classes within primary
education in different countries is long and complex. Historical texts remind
us that many forms of so-called ‘traditional education’ were transacted in
one-teacher schools with pupils of various ages and experience. Casual
observations of children learning within families and local communities
remind us how much and how effectively children develop certain skills and
attitudes within mixed-age groups and how this form of learning is as old as
mankind. A particular form of the multigraded school, the ‘one-teacher
school’ has roots that dig deep into the histories of most contemporary
education systems. The history of monograded schooling is much shorter.
This chapter constructs an account of the emergence of the monograded
system of schooling in Europe during the late Roman, late Medieval,
Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. It draws on a variety of secondary
historical sources and focuses on secular education for children in their
initial stages of formal education beyond the home.
One-teacher schools in the late Roman and medieval periods
Morgan (2001) focuses her account of late Roman education on the
arrangements made for literacy learning among young children. Drawing
from Latin and Greek texts she explains how
[t]here were no designated school buildings in the Roman world; teachers
taught in private houses, or in public places like gymnasia, wrestling grounds
and town lecture halls or simply under a portico or in the street.
(Morgan, 2001: 13)
‘Schools’ were generally run by an individual teacher, working alone or
sometimes with a subordinate teacher. Children seemed to learn on their own
with texts provided by the teacher. There appears to have been no notion of a
curriculum in the modern sense of a legal framework of knowledge/skills to
be addressed or in the sense of a course to be followed by children of similar
ages together. At the elementary stage of education children did not appear
to be grouped together as a class.
Children all seem to work on their own, though they talk to each other (and
fall out). Except when a teacher dictates grammatical information, there is no
sense of the group as a focused ‘class’ and this impression is reinforced when
… pupils arrive and depart at different times.
(Morgan, 2001: 13)
ANGELA W. LITTLE10
Unlike in contemporary Western education there was no notion of cohorts of
same-age children entering school at the same time in order to learn to read
and write. Children entered school at different ages. Learning was assessed
by the teacher informally, as the work progressed. There were no entrance,
aptitude or achievement tests, a fact that reflects the absence of any legal
requirement that children be educated, nor any guidance on the ages at which
children should enter or leave school (Morgan, 2001: 15).
The teacher’s focus on the individual child rather than the whole class
was reinforced by educational theorists of the day. One of the most famous,
Quintilian (c. 35–90 CE), advocated a child-centred approach to pedagogy in
which the teacher
must attend to the behaviour of the child and watch for his responses; by
choosing tasks appropriate to the child’s age, and relating the size and difficulty
(Bowen, 1972: 202)
Although there was no legally prescribed curriculum for any stage of
education, Quintilian’s text prescribes one that spans the elementary stages
of literacy and language and the subsequent stages of grammar and rhetoric.
Far from it being a wish list, Bowen maintains that Quintilian’s curriculum
reflected current Roman and Greek practice.
Education should begin with reading, progressing from letters through
syllables to words and sentences; upon such a foundation the grammaticus can
build with instruction in grammar – accidence, analysis, declension and
conjugation – along with syntax and orthography. Literature too should be
taught by the standard method of praelectio. To that verbal core Quintilian
adds mathematics and music, though not for any intrinsic reasons: geometry’s
value is in its exemplification of logical reasoning, music is useful as a social
grace. Instruction in rhetoric, proceeding from those foundations, is detailed in
nine books, following customary practices.
(Bowen, 1972: 201)
More advanced training, especially in rhetoric, appears to have departed
from the individualistic approach of teaching and learning at the elementary
stage. All pupils were expected to follow the same set of exercises. Teachers
interacted with groups of pupils as a whole class, with pupils ‘declaiming’ to
the whole class, and the teacher feeding back corrections for the benefit of
everyone and not just the individual. A separate strand of education –
athletic training – was also organised in groups divided strictly by age
(Morgan, 2001). Over time two strands of the classical curriculum became
and for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
of the task to his attention span and capn acity, tt better results will be achieved.*
* I am grateful to Andy Green for drawing my attention to Bowen’s volumes on the History of Education
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 11
established – the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium
(music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy).
The course of elementary education in Europe between the end of the
Roman period and the Renaissance is difficult to track. For some historians
this is the period of the Dark and Middle Ages when classical education and
culture were replaced by a cultural vacuum. Lawton and Gordon (2002)
present a slightly more positive account of educational developments during
the period. Roman traditions endured in some parts of Europe, despite the
barbarian invasions. Islamic, monastic and other forms of religious education
flourished. In non-monastic schools run by the Christian church a liberal
curriculum comprising the classical trivium and the quadrivium was
adopted. Also at this time the first Universities were being established.
Ari s provides an account of schooling in Late Medieval France (c. AD
1300–1400). Medieval schools were ‘confined to the tonsured, to the clerics
and the religious’ (Ari s, 1962: 137). Elementary knowledge, he maintained,
including reading and writing, was taught at home not at school.
Nonetheless, many of the characteristics of the ideal-typical medieval school
resonate with Morgan’s account of elementary education in the late Roman
period. Formal learning was directed by a single private teacher, learners
entered his tutelage at varying ages and all studied the same texts and
subjects in the same room. There was no notion of a graduated curriculum,
no precondition of age for starting or finishing a course of study, and hence,
no link between age, class and curriculum level. Learners were differentiated
only by the number of times they had repeated or memorised the same (few)
books selected by the teacher (Ari s, 1962: 141–50).
Hamilton’s description of the medieval school is similar:
a medieval school was primarily an educational relationship entered into by a
private teacher and a group of individual scholars. Like guild masters and
their apprentices teachers took students at all levels of competence and,
accordingly, organized their teaching largely on an individual basis. Such
individualization fed back, in turn, upon the general organization of schooling.
First, there was no presumption that every student was ‘learning’ the same
passage. Secondly, there was no pedagogical necessity that all students should
remain in the teacher’s presence throughout the hours of teaching – they could
just as easily study (cf. memorize) their lessons elsewhere. And thirdly, there
was no expectation that students would stay at school after their specific
educational goals had been reached. Essentially, medieval schooling was a
loose-textured organizational form which could easily encompass a large
number of students. Its apparent laxity (for example absenteeism, or the fact
that enrolments did not match attendance) was not so much a failure (or
breakdown) of school organization as a perfectly efficient response to the
demands that were placed on it.
(Hamilton, 1989: 38)
ANGELA W. LITTLE12
The emergence of classes and classrooms during the European Renaissance
The shift from ungraded groups of learners, heterogeneous in achievement
and age, to the present-day notion of classes graded by age and achievement
was a slow process spanning five centuries. Ari s suggests that in France the
shift began during the fifteenth century.
The heterogeneous body remained in a single room under the common
supervision of the masters, but it was broken up into groups according to the
extent of the pupil’s knowledge, and the masters got into the habit of
addressing each of these groups separately. The pedagogic practice was the
result of the passage from the simultaneous pedagogy of medieval tradition to
the progressive pedagogy which would carry the day.
(Ari s, 1962:173)
The separation of groups based on the level of pupil knowledge was the
beginnings of the notion of a ‘class’. In France the modern notion of pupils
moving from the sixth or fifth class to the first class was established during
the second half of the sixteenth century.
From the end of the sixteenth century it was generally accepted in France
that every ‘class’ had its own teacher, but not yet its own classroom. The
idea of a separate room for each class became established during the
seventeenth century and seemed to arise from increases in the school
population. Each classroom would comprise pupils separated now by their
achievements and the difficulty of the subject matter but not yet by age
(Ari s, 1962: 176–82). In England the shift to the teaching of single classes
in separate classrooms would be slower. Describing the hesitation of the
English grammar schools to increase the numbers of teachers, Ari s (1962:
177) illustrates his case with an example from Eton where, in the mid-
sixteenth century, there were still only two teachers – the master and the
usher.
The re-emergence of the idea of a graded curriculum
The idea of a ‘curriculum’ or course of study – implicit in Quintilian’s texts
on education and in the liberal education of elites in medieval Europe –
developed further during the Renaissance period. Bowen (1981) describes
how the recovery of classical Greek and Roman texts and their translation
into vernaculars by the Renaissance humanists and advances in printing and
book production led to the dissemination of learning ‘now organised into
pedagogical sequences’ (Bowen, 1981: 6). In the sixteenth century Erasmus
è
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 13
of Rotterdam wrote a treatise, On the Right Method of Instruction, in which
he argued for
a graded progression of studies from an elementary grammar through a series
of Latin and Greek texts to the study of selected passages of classical and
Christian literature, with an emphasis on grammatical, syntactical and textual
exegesis.
(Bowen, 1981: 8)
Bowen (1981) maintains that the principle of text grading was transferred to
the schools where programmes of instruction were also graded. Joannes
Sturmis and the city council of Strasbourg are credited with establishing the
systematic organisation of schools by grade, a form that spread throughout
Protestant Europe.
Pupils were grouped in a series of classes according to their fitness,
promotions from one class to another were made annually with solemn
ceremony, the classes were subdivided into sections of ten under the charge of
an older pupil called a decurion.
(Boyd and King, 1975)
Linking the notion of a curriculum with the emergence of separate classes,
Ari s notes how, by the beginning of the seventeenth century in France,
classes had arisen in order to divide students by capacity and ‘the difficulty
of subject matter’ (Ari s 1962: 182).
Hamilton (1989) traces developments in the notion of curriculum to the
practices of the Universities rather than schools. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century records of the Universities of Leiden and Glasgow indicate that the
curriculum referred to an entire course spanning several years of study
prescribed for each student. Hamilton explains:
Any course worthy of its name was to embody both ‘disciplina’ (a sense
of structural coherence), and ‘ordo’ (a sense of internal sequence). A
‘curriculum’ should not only be ‘followed’; it should also be ‘completed’.
Whereas the sequence, length and completeness of medieval courses had been
relatively open to student negotiation (for example, at Bologna) and/or teacher
abuse (for example, in Paris), the emergence of ‘curriculum’ brought … a
greater sense of control to both teaching and learning.
(Hamilton, 1989: 45)
Although almost all the schools referred to above conducted studies in the
classical languages rather than vernaculars, and were attended by only a
minority, developments in the way of organising pupils for instruction and
the subject matter of what is to be taught would have far-reaching effects on
forms of education throughout the modern world.
ANGELA W. LITTLE14
The expansion of educational opportunity, costs and the graded school
The gradual expansion of educational opportunity to the poorest (the social
group on whom current movements for EFA are most focused) followed
different routes in the countries of Europe. In England the processes of
industrialisation in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the
migration of populations from rural to urban areas led to changes in attitudes
to formal education and the numbers of children who participated in it.
Children were widely employed in factories, worked long hours under
difficult conditions and lived unhealthily. The social reformers of the
Enlightenment led movements for the expansion of education to the poorest
groups in society. While there seemed to be general agreement about the
need for education among the poorest groups in society – civilising,
socialising, moralising and industrialising – there was a lack of consensus
over responsibility for its provision. But if there was dispute over who
should provide and pay for education for the poorest there was less
controversy over the form that it should take. As Lawton and Gordon
explain,
In 1796, Sir Thomas Bernard, one of the founders of the Society for Bettering
the Conditions of the Poor, stated that the monitorial system was ‘the division
of labour applied to intellectual purposes. The principle in schools and
manufactories is the same’.
(Lawton and Gordon, 2002: 117)
As we shall see, the monitorial system combined the traditional idea of the
single-teacher school with the emerging and progressive idea of separate
‘teachers’ for each curriculum grade. The monitorial system involved a
single master responsible for large numbers of learners in one large room,
assisted by a team of monitors. Learners were divided into ‘classes’ or
‘rows’, each the responsibility of one monitor. Each higher class tackled
subject matter of a higher order of difficulty. Efficient use of pupil time and
low teacher costs were central to this system. This was effected through a
division of learners into homogeneous groups, differentiated from each other
in terms of achievement level, each group working under the strict
supervision of a monitor, the monitors working under the strict supervision
of the master. The parallel between the division of labour in the factory and
in the school was clear.
In England the monitorial system was promoted by two voluntary and
rival bodies, their rivalry contributing to the expansion of mass primary
education. The ‘Institution for Promoting the British System for the
MULTIGRADE REALITIES AND HISTORIES 15
Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of Every
Religious Persuasion’ (otherwise known as the British and Foreign Schools
society), employed Joseph Lancaster to promote the monitorial system. The
‘National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the
method in Madras, India where, as chaplain to five army regiments, he had
perfected a method of teaching reading and writing using bright pupils as
monitors.
Taylor (1996) provides a detailed account of the monitorial school estab-
lished by Joseph Lancaster in South London in 1804.
Each boy … sat in his place on a long bench shared with the other nine boys
in his class. They were all at roughly the same stage of learning and all were
under the guidance of one monitor … some children might only spend a few
months at school. Every moment of their time was precious and Joseph
endeavoured to see that none of it was wasted.… Every monitor concentrated
on instructing his class in one or two carefully designated tasks and doing it
thoroughly … the efficiency of the (Monitorial) Plan depended on the monitor
knowing exactly what he had to do. It was essential that he was examined by
the teacher before he undertook his duties. Some of the monitors were very
young, and Joseph took care that their own education was not neglected. But,
in teaching others, they were reinforcing their own learning. Each boy in each
class knew the immediate goal at which he was aiming and was spurred on to
master it by the enthusiasm of his monitor, by the rivalry of his classmates,
and by the knowledge that a small reward would be his, once he had mastered
the task. He would then move to a new class and a new goal. Each child was
able to progress at his own pace and was not necessarily in the same class for
every subject. The slow child spent longer at each stage than his quicker
classmate…. The quick child was able to progress by leaps and bounds.
(Taylor, 1996: 4–7)
Monitorial schools were notable for their rigid and hierarchical
differentiation or grading of classes and subject matter. Meritorious
performance was encouraged through praise and points, the accumulated
points leading, in Lancaster’s schools, to prizes of bats, balls and kites
(Lancaster 1803: 49). Rows were differentiated by the levels of knowledge
mastery of the learners rather than their age. The monitorial schools
combined elements of what we would term today monograde and multigrade
organisation. The monitor was responsible for a single grade at any one time;
the single schoolmaster was responsible for organising the teaching and
learning of multiple grades of learners.
Monitorial schools for girls were established in urban areas, though in
terms of total enrolments boys would outnumber girls. Monitorial schools
spread to many other countries. Lancaster promoted the system in the United
Established Church’ (otherwise known as the National Society) employed
Dr Andrew Bell to do likewise. Bell is credited by some to have ‘invented’ the
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